Center for Doctoral Studies in Social and Behavioral Sciences, Graduate School of Economic and Social Sciences, University of Mannheim, Germany.
J Affect Disord. 2014 Jan;152-154:83-90. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2013.05.001. Epub 2013 Aug 12.
Emotion regulation deficits are a key characteristic of bipolar disorder (BD). In the present study, we asked if deficits in emotion regulation are also a vulnerability marker for BD. To this end, we investigated a healthy group of participants at high-risk for developing BD, defined on the basis of a hypomanic personality trait. We examined the neural correlates of two emotion regulation strategies, reappraisal and distraction.
Twenty-two individuals with higher risk for BD and twenty-four controls were investigated in a functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm. Participants were presented with negative, positive and neutral pictures and were either required to passively view the images, to down-regulate the emotional response by reappraising the pictures' content, or to perform a distracting arithmetic task.
High-risk individuals showed increased emotional reactivity to negative stimuli, indicated by heightened amygdala activation during passive viewing. High-risk participants were also less successful in down-regulating amygdala activity using reappraisal of negative stimuli. During distraction from positive stimuli, high-risk individuals showed heightened task-related activity in the inferior parietal cortex, suggesting increased distractibility by task-irrelevant positive background stimuli. There were no differences in habitual emotion regulation as assessed by a self-report questionnaire.
Generalizability of the present results is limited by the age- and education-homogenous sample and the small sample size.
This is the first study to report neural correlates of increased emotional reactivity and deficient emotion regulation in healthy individuals at risk for BD. These findings suggest inefficient emotion regulation through reappraisal and distraction in individuals with high hypomanic personality who are supposed to be at higher risk to develop bipolar disorder.
情绪调节缺陷是双相情感障碍（BD）的一个关键特征。在本研究中，我们想知道情绪调节缺陷是否也是 BD 的一个脆弱性标志物。为此，我们调查了一组有发展为 BD 高风险的健康参与者，这些参与者的定义是基于轻度躁狂人格特质。我们研究了两种情绪调节策略（再评价和分心）的神经相关性。
我们在功能磁共振成像范式中调查了 22 名具有较高 BD 风险的个体和 24 名对照者。参与者被呈现消极、积极和中性的图片，要求他们被动地观看图片，通过重新评价图片的内容来调节情绪反应，或者执行分散注意力的算术任务。
高风险个体在被动观看时表现出对消极刺激的更高的情绪反应，表现为杏仁核激活增加。高风险参与者在使用再评价来调节消极刺激的情绪反应时也不太成功。在对积极刺激进行分心时，高风险个体在顶下小叶表现出更高的与任务相关的活动，这表明他们更容易被无关的积极背景刺激分心。在自我报告的问卷评估中，没有发现习惯性情绪调节的差异。
本研究结果的普遍性受到年龄和教育均一的样本和小样本量的限制。
这是第一项报道健康的有发展为 BD 高风险的个体中情绪反应增加和情绪调节缺陷的神经相关性的研究。这些发现表明，在有较高轻度躁狂人格特质的个体中，通过再评价和分心进行的情绪调节效率低下，这些个体被认为有更高的发展为双相情感障碍的风险。
